Gavroche as a Profound Calculator of Distances — Les Misérables

Marius kept his promise. He dropped a kiss on that livid brow, where the icy perspiration stood in beads. This was no infidelity to Cosette; it was a gentle and pensive farewell to an unhappy soul. It was not without a tremor that he had taken the letter. He felt that it was an event of weight. The heart of man is so constituted that the unhappy child had hardly closed her eyes when he began to think of unfolding this paper. He laid her gently on the ground and went away. Something told him that he could not peruse that letter in the presence of that body. He drew near to a candle in the tap-room. It was a small note, folded and sealed with a woman's elegant care. The address ran to Marius Pontmercy, at Courfeyrac's. He broke the seal and read: My dearest, alas! my father insists on our setting out immediately. We shall be this evening in the Rue de l'Homme Arme, No. 7. In a week we shall be in England. Cosette. June 4th. Such was the innocence of their love that Marius was not even acquainted with Cosette's handwriting.

What had taken place may be related in a few words. Eponine had been the cause of everything. After the evening of the 3rd of June she had cherished a double idea: to defeat the projects of her father and the ruffians on the house of the Rue Plumet, and to separate Marius and Cosette. She had exchanged rags and disguised herself like a man. It was she who had conveyed to the father in the Champ de Mars the warning: Leave your house. Cosette, overwhelmed, had penned a couple of lines. She never went out alone, and the servant would have shown the letter. She had caught sight through the fence of Eponine in man's clothes, handed him five francs and the letter, and said: Carry this letter immediately to its address. Eponine had put it in her pocket. The next day she had gone to Courfeyrac's not to deliver it, but to see. When Courfeyrac had said they were going to the barricades, an idea flashed through her: to fling herself into that death and to thrust Marius into it also. She had followed, then gone to the Rue Plumet, and sent him, in the name of his friends, the appeal which would lead him to the barricade. She reckoned on his despair when he should fail to find Cosette. She was not mistaken. She died with the tragic joy of jealous hearts who drag the beloved being into their own death, and who say: No one shall have him!

Marius covered Cosette's letter with kisses. So she loved him! For one moment the idea occurred to him that he ought not to die now. Then he said to himself that she was going away, that her father was taking her to England, that his grandfather refused his consent, that nothing was changed in their fates. The fatigue of living is insupportable; death is sooner over with. Then he reflected that he had still two duties: to inform Cosette of his death and send her a final farewell, and to save from the impending catastrophe that poor child, Eponine's brother. He tore a leaf from his pocket-book and wrote that their marriage was impossible, that he would keep his promise, that he died, that he loved her. He added the address at the Rue de l'Homme Arme. On the first page of the pocket-book he wrote his name and asked that his body be carried to his grandfather in the Marais. Then he called Gavroche. Will you do something for me? Anything, said Gavroche. Take this letter. Leave the barricade instantly. Tomorrow morning you will deliver it to Cosette. The heroic child replied: Well, but in the meanwhile the barricade will be taken, and I shall not be there. Go at once. Gavroche stood in indecision, scratching his ear sadly. All at once he took the letter with one of those birdlike movements which were common with him. All right, said he. And he started off at a run through Mondetour lane. An idea had occurred to him which he had not mentioned, for fear that Marius might offer some objection. It is barely midnight, the street is not far off; I will go and deliver the letter at once, and I shall get back in time.